William Marshall Richardson M. D.

   William Marshall Richardson was born in Brunswick County, North Carolina, 15 February 1831. He 
   was the son of Purdie Richardson (b. Bladen County) and Catherine Marshall (b. Anson County), the 
   grandson of the Rev. Samuel Neal Richardson and Mary Ann Smith of "Harmony Hall" on the Cape Fear
   River near White Oak, Bladen County, and the great grandson of Colonel James Richardson and
   Elizabeth Neal (Bugnion) (Purdie) who built "Harmony Hall" near White Oak, Bladen County. William
   M. Richardson's maternal grandparents were William Marshall and Sallie Lanier, and his great-
   grandparents were James Marshall and Ann Harrison and Burwell Lanier and Elizabeth Hill all of Anson
   County NC.

   When William M. was nine years of age his parents moved from Brunswick County to the vicinity of
   Wadesboro in Anson County, where he grew up. He attended the University of North Carolina,
   graduating with an A.B. degree in 1851. In John Hill Wheeler's "Historical Sketches of North Carolina"
   (p. 129) William is shown to have been a commencement speaker, June 1851. The University of North
   Carolina presented him with a Bible, and the entries made in this Bible are included with this paper.

   He then attended Medical School in Charleston in 1852, and 1854 he was graduated in Medicine from
   Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A brother, Clement Lanier Richardson also
   graduated from University of North Carolina, and he too became a medical doctor.

   William was married three times. By his first wife Martha Elizabeth McRae of Richmond County NC, he
   had a son and a daughter, both of whom died as children. By his second wife, Olivia Caroline Johnson of
   Mississippi he had three daughters, two living to adulthood, and by his third wife, Anna Louise Gibson of
   St. Louis Missouri he had two daughters and one son.

   He served in the CSA, as 1st Lt in the 43rd Regt., Alabama Volunteers, but evidentally had to resign his
   commission because of contracting a disease which prevented his performing effectively. He practiced
   medicine in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida. He practiced in Jeanerette Louisiana for 19
   years and here his last three children were born.

   In 1886, William and Anna Louise with Louise, Ella, and Purdie, moved to Marion County[,] Florida near
   McIntosh and Boardman where he became a citrus grower and a semi-retired physician, and built a home
   "Hillcrest". Devastating Florida freezes forced him to give up his farming, and he and Anna moved to
   Ocala in Marion County, and then still later to West Palm Beach, Florida to be near their oldest daughter,
   Louise Price.

   He joined the Methodist church early in life, and was very active in that church in the various places in
   which he lived. In Jeanerette he conducted the Sunday School for the many years he lived there, and was
   one of the founders of the Center Point Methodist Church near "Hillcrest". This church is now the
   McIntosh Methodist Church..


   He was totally blind for the last seven years of his life. His last days, after the death of his wife, Anna,
   were spent in the home of his daughter Ella Bouvier in Union County, FL. He died at the age of 98, 20
   April 1929. It had pleased him that he had become the senior alumnus of the University of North
   Carolina.

   He was buried by his wife Anna in the Woodlawn Cemetery, West Palm Beach, Florida.


   Elizabeth McRae[?] Hamrick
 
   1995